Bolton count cost of misfiring Anelka

skills are facing their biggest test yet as Nicolas Anelka continues to search in vain for his first Premiership goal as a Bolton player.

Anelka has toiled in eight league games since his £8 million move from Fenerbahce and the first signs of irritability are starting to show, made

worse by Lee McCulloch’s late winner for Wigan.

The Frenchman, incidentally the only outfield player to wear gloves, badly spooned his only proper chance over the crossbar to leave Allardyce

admitting: "He is short of confidence and didn’t produce the quality of finish that we know he’s capable of.

"If he’d scored at 0-0, I’m sure I wouldn’t be talking about a defeat. It concerns me but I’ll carry on picking him.You deal with pressure through your best players. I can accept losing to

Manchester United like we did but I can’t accept losing to Wigan. Our blip has arrived but it’s Sheffield United next and we must roll our sleeves up."

Anelka looked exasperated, and no wonder. A grim Lancashire derby in plummeting temperatures is not

necessarily a natural stage for a player who has graced the cosmopolitan cities of London, Madrid, Paris and Istanbul. And as much as the Wanderers No 39 ran about, he never received a decent pass.

Wigan have won three on the spin all with clean sheets since being beaten 3-1 at home by United.

Their boss, Paul Jewell, said: "We were a little bit brittle earlier in the season. We knew we had

to battle hard and that’s what we did. OK, it wasn’t a great game but it was a great result for us."

The only goal after 79 minutes was a quality one, totally out of keeping with the rest of the play. Kevin Kilbane and Henri Camara played a one-two, and when Kilbane fed McCulloch, the Scot fired home first time from 18 yards.

He was only the pitch because Emile Heskey limped off midway through the first half. The unsung McCulloch cost Wigan just £700,000 when he

joined from Motherwell in 2001 — a sharp contrast with the £70m spent on Anelka during his career. Yet while McCulloch took his chance with aplomb, Anelka’s only goals this season remain against Walsall and the Faroe Islands.

Incredibly, Bolton are still third in the

Premiership and on course for a Champions League spot. Their lofty position suggests the Premiership is not all it is cracked up to be and a meagre crowd of 21,000 for a derby suggests the fans are not fooled either.

Those Bolton fans who stayed until the end booed their team off and Allardyce said pointedly: "I’ve spoilt them but I can forgive a little pettiness."

The most notable incident of the first half came when Kevin Davies caught Wigan’s Chris Kirkland with a stray forearm, leaving the dazed goalkeeper

requiring treatment. Stelios did net the ball in first-half injury-time but the assistant referee’s flag was already up.